


Appetence

by ossseous (ozean)



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst, Asexual Relationship, Flashbacks, Hospitals, Infidelity, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, possible future polyamory not sure yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:44:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7441450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozean/pseuds/ossseous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin has been with Arthur ever since he can remember, and a life without him seems unthinkable.  And yet he finds himself endlessly drawn to Gwaine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“See something?” Gwaine asked.

Or at least he felt pretty certain that was what Gwaine asked.  He just returned to their little booth with both of their coffees occupying a hand each.  Their croissants, in their grease stained paper bag, hung clenched between his teeth and served little purpose other than to muffle his words.  Luckily Merlin was quite fluent in the language of Gwaine, which meant he had long ago learned to understand most of what he said when he had his mouth full.

But even if he was mostly sure he could decipher Gwaine’s garbled attempt at a question, Merlin still didn’t answer.  So Gwaine—exaggerating a disgusted gag at the taste of paper—dropped the bag on the table and set Merlin’s coffee in front of him as he took the opposite seat.

He remained hesitant to answer for the simple fact that the morning had started off so well.  Stepping out the entrance to Gwiane’s apartment, they found it significantly colder their either of them expected.  They tried to brave it out, hunching their shoulder’s in, doing their best to shield their rapidly freezing ears.  A competition formed as they eyed one another, neither of them wanting to be the first one to crack and make a break for the door.  They didn’t last for more than a minute, but Gwaine gave in not two seconds before Merlin did.  He punctuated his defeat with a curse, rolling his eyes at Merlin’s victorious cheer.  It wasn’t as if Merlin could enjoy the victory for long though as they sprinted back inside for scarves and hats and gloves.  Merlin hadn’t brought any of his own winter gear for the stay, but Gwaine lent him some of his own, insisting on wrapping a scarf nearly around Merlin’s whole head.

Better fitted, the walk to Gwaine’s most frequented haunt was much more pleasant, even if they could barely talk through their chattering teeth and shivered laughs.  So he just kept thinking, as they attempted to settle into their booth for breakfast, about how much he did not want to ruin the mood.

“Out with it then,” Gwaine said, not ungently as he peeled back the tab on his lid.  He gave it a sniff and with earned approval, took a generous sip.  Really he should have known that Gwaine wouldn’t have been able to just let it slide.  Or perhaps he did know and didn’t want to face the more inconvenient reality.  So instead he bought himself some time, drummed his thumb on the table, and for a moment even considered making something up.  He could say that he caught sight of an old friend, or that he saw someone slip on a patch of ice, or that a nice car caught his eye as it passed by.  But for some reason that Merlin could never really figure out, lying to Gwaine was particularly hard.  With a sigh he gave in.

“I thought I saw Arthur, just after they called you up,” he said.  He nodded to the window where the thick glass was still mottled with condensation, the outside too cold, the inside too warm.  Gwaine had already drawn a smiley face as they waited for their order to be called and they both wrote out their names for reasons neither of them really knew.  Merlin, annoyed that Gwaine’s handwriting was actually neater than his own, used his sleeve to wipe GWAINE away, much to Gwaine’s rather dramatic protests.  Gwaine of course wrecked his revenge by smearing his palm across half of it as he stood to retrieve their order. 

But through the long steady drips that trailed down from where MER was still scrawled across the window, he could see the near endless stream of commuters passing by, each indistinguishable from the next.  Merlin looked back to Gwaine, expecting a response, but he didn’t give the window more than a glance from the corner of his eye.  If he doubted that Merlin saw Arthur, he didn’t voice it.  Nor did he try to convince him that he saw someone else, which Merlin was glad for.  He thought that perhaps Gwaine had seen his fair share of phantom glimpses as well.  Perhaps that was just the curse of the unfaithful, forever burdened by the fear of their exposition, that their transgressions would be laid bare for everyone to see.

But Gwaine’s silence was all that Merlin needed to pull his thoughts back to them, back to that moment, back to their date.  He took the opportunity to shake his paranoia from his mind and take a sip from his own coffee.  Any of the shared self-loathing that was left—the kind that always settled between them when Arthur’s name came up—dissipated.  It didn’t naturally fizzle out but rather snapped away when Merlin broke the tension by outright gagging at the bitter taste he was entirely certain was never going to leave his mouth.  It was all he could do to swallow it down and not spit it out altogether.

Moaning and desperate to taste something that was not the concoction of jet fuel and battery acid that he just got unpleasantly acquainted with, he ripped open the bag and shoved a croissant in his mouth.  Chewing through what he could, he tried to tell Gwaine that the barista got his order wrong.  But he found Gwaine too busy attempting to—and quite frankly failing to—suppress his amusement.

“You knew, didn’t you?  Why didn’t you tell me?” He all but shouted through his mouthful of croissant, glaring across the table at a man who couldn’t be less fazed by his ire.

Gwaine laughed at his expense, but switched their cups nonetheless. “Wanted to see what face you’d make.  Worth it in my opinion.” He mimicked what was apparently Merlin’s wide-eyed shock and disgust from the moment before.

Merlin swallowed the rest down and shook his head.  With pointed caution, he brought his correct drink to his mouth and took a slow sip.  He attempted to maintain a steely glare, but he couldn’t hold it up for very long and soon enough he felt the smile slip through.

And for a moment there, it felt as though it might all work.  Sitting there, enjoying a meal like normal people might—like a normal couple might.  But he was drawn back to it, as if it never left his thoughts in the first place.  That spot just across the street where he could have sworn he saw that crown of golden hair.

Even if he knew it wasn’t Arthur’s route to work that wasn’t enough to dispel his worry.  He also knew that their work was nearby, knew that Gwaine lived in walking distance and that it couldn’t have been more than a couple of blocks away.  Perhaps Arthur wanted breakfast before he went in for the day, or meant to meet a friend, or maybe construction altered his route or any number of little things that would pull him from his regular route and reveal Merlin to him in all of his deceit.

But if it had been him, if he had seen them together there when Merlin was meant to be two states away at a conference, would Arthur have even said something?  Would he have stormed across the street, through the morning traffic and crowds of bodies waiting for lights to turn, signals to chime, just to bust through the door and treat him with the verbal lashing Merlin was certain he deserved?  He wondered if he would be as angry at Gwaine.  He doubted it.  Gwaine was just his friend, not even his best friend.  That was Merlin.  But Merlin was also something much more.

He didn’t realize he had gotten stuck staring out the window until he felt a slight pluck at the skin of his wrist.  Glancing back, he found Gwaine’s expression drench in resigned empathy as he brushed his thumb lightly over where his pulse thrummed away in his wrist.  That was about as intimate as they got in public.  Nothing else obvious, nothing others might see.

“Want to head back?” He asked, and Merlin wanted to hit himself because he found a way to ruin the mood anyway.  Merlin rotated his cup, the coffee losing its warmth about as quickly as he found himself losing his courage.  All there was to do was decide if the anxiety of being seen outweighed his desire for them to be just two normal people for once.  Not two traitors.

It did.

He sighed.  “Yeah, let’s go.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, this is getting a bit more plot than I had originally intended.

2 years before

 

There were a lot of thing Merlin would have preferred to do in that moment besides stepping back into the hospital.  Approximately eight months before, he quit his internship at that very hospital prematurely and effectively chose not to pursue a license.  Something he had been working towards for years, spiraled down the drain and while there were many people in his life that expressed their displeasure at his choice, most of them worked there.

He set foot in the hospital the night before for the first time in those eight month, but every second past the emergency entrance doors was spent mostly in a flurry of confused and harried activity, so he and Arthur quite easily snuck out before being noticed by any of the staff.

Merlin was completely and entirely certain that he would not be as lucky the next morning.

And he was completely and entirely right.

The second he approached the nurse’s station, setting down the shopping bag that contained exactly one pair of jeans, he found himself overwhelmed by the reception.  They all were beaming smiles and _where-the-hell-have-you-beens_ and _is-it-really-that-hard-to-visits_ as they rushed around, nearly stampeding in order to give him hugs and pinch his cheeks.  He made his best attempt to placate them and beg their forgiveness and returned as many hugs as he could.  But he did it all as quietly as he could, knowing Gaius, the one who disapproved of his decision the most, was likely somewhere on the same floor.

Perhaps Merlin would have been able to deal with Gaius’s opposition much more easily if it had been based in anger.  But instead, Merlin knew it wasn’t so much anger at him for quitting, as much as it was disappointment that Merlin had not seen it through.  Merlin could still remember the calm way Gaius informed him that he thought Merlin was making a mistake that he would come to regret.  But he said his piece, ultimately assented to respect Merlin’s choice, and for the most part they left it all in the past.

And it was easy to ignore that tension outside of the hospital when they met up over holidays.  But for some reason whenever Gaius saw Merlin inside the hospital, it was as if he just couldn’t let it go.  Gaius never said a word, but the look that always crossed his face was enough to make Merlin envy how much easier it would be to be doused in ice water, or stretched on the rack, or tossed off a building, than to face him in those moments.

So if he did what he could to avoid him—to avoid the hospital altogether—could anyone really blame him?

“So, 382a?” He asked as the most senior member of the nursing staff, a portly woman who insisted everyone call her Miriam, made her way back around the counter.  She had been there the longest of anyone, and Merlin particularly remembered her from when he was just a kid and she’d sneak him treats when Gaius wasn’t looking.

She didn’t even have to look through the files to know exactly who he was talking about, she just traded a look with another nurse and they both started laughing.  From the parts he remembered of the night before, and he was often proud of his ability to remember his time spent less sober, that reaction did not really surprise him.

“I assume that means he’s okay then?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine.”

Merlin was just about to ask for the story they both seemed eager to tell when Gaius ambled over to the station, face buried in a chart as he alternated between highlighting and scrawling notes for the nurses.  Seeing an opportunity as Gaius addressed some random intern, Merlin tried to subtly step away.  He might have gotten away and out of sight except that Miriam, who Merlin then decided was apparently no longer the sweet old lady that sneaked him snacks but in fact a traitor, cleared her throat pointedly.  Gaius looked to her, brows scrunched up in question until Miriam not so subtly tilted her head in Merlin’s direction.

“Merlin!” Gaius said his name like he always did those days, with a bit of happy surprise, and like always for a brief moment, Merlin thought he might have been off the hook.  That for once he could leave the hospital without feeling guilty, that perhaps enough time had passed and the tension dissipated without him even realizing.   However as quickly as the look of pleased surprised surface, it slipped, replaced with the slight falter that always found its way into Gaius’s expression.  It only lasted a second before he was quickly masking it with a smile.  “Here to see Gwaine I assume?”

“Yeah,” he said, shuffling back over to where Gaius stood.  “How is he doing?”

Gaius motioned for him to follow after him.  He never really seemed able to break the habit of assuming people knew to just follow him when he worked up a stride, flitting from one patient to the next.  Luckily Merlin didn’t seem able to break the habit of trailing after him either.  He snatched up the bag and with a wave to the nurses, followed him down the hall and around a corner.

“He’s fine, stable, regained consciousness pretty soon after he arrived last night, The nurses had a heyday waking him up through the night.  But brain activity is normal.  Or at least, as normal as it can be for those types.”

It sounded a little harsh, but Merlin had spent enough time in the hospital to know how frustrating the ‘repeat customer’ types could be for doctors.  The reckless ones, never really willing to take care of themselves.  He decided to focus on the nurses instead.  “Yeah, the nurses seemed amused by it all.”

Apparently Gaius wasn’t going to go into it though, and continued on in the slightly more formal tone he took on when discussing anything remotely medical.  “We might release him this afternoon, but he will probably have to stay overnight.”

“For some reason I feel like he isn’t going to like that.”  Merlin said as they arrived at 382.  Gaius gave him a look that said he suspected the very same thing before they both peered in through the window.  Gwaine laid there in one of the two beds, separated by a long row of curtains, the same kind that Merlin enjoyed pulling back and forth a little too much as a child, and much to the annoyance of everyone in the room.  Arthur was being pretty generous in paying for Gwaine’s treatment, but it wasn’t like Merlin expected him to spring for a private room.  Even if Merlin thought Arthur had the money to spare, even he thought that might be a bit much.

“You’re not keeping him overnight to squeeze more money out of Arthur, are you?” Merlin glanced at Gaius out of the corner of his eye and could see the amusement crinkle around his eyes.

“Merlin, I would never do something so horrendous,” he said, affecting a mild outraged shock before adding a chuckle and a shoulder squeeze.  Before Merlin could realize that wasn’t exactly an answer, Gaius turned and shuffled back down the hall with a blind wave in Merlin's direction.

Looking back through the window, he found Gwaine was fully awake and making as if to pull at his IV.  Or not really _making_ like he was but actually was about to tug it out, so Merlin yanked open the door and rushed over.

“No no, don’t do that,” he said, freezing when Gwaine looked up.  To Gwaine’s credit, he did stop reaching for the IV, if only for a couple of seconds.  Enough time for him to glance around the room as though he could suss out what spot Merlin popped out of.  But apparently compliance was overrated and Gwaine reached for it once more.

“Why not?  I’m fine,” he said, looking it over, trying to figure out just how to get it out of him.

“Maybe because it could get infected?!”  He unfroze and sidled up next to the bed.  Gwaine paused once more, considering what Merlin was saying through the likely haze of his groggy thoughts.  From the way his eyes squinted a little, processing it all seemed to be a little difficult for him at that moment.  So instead of backing away, Merlin remained perched over the arm in question, ready to swat a defiant hand away in case Gwaine decided not to listen.  He only took a step back after a moment passed and Gwaine weakly lifted his hand in mock surrender and let his head flop back on the pillow with an annoyed huff.

“What was your name again?” Gwaine asked as Merlin took a peak at what was in the IV bag.

“Merlin.”

“Merlin…” Gwaine paused, mouthing the name silently, thinking thoughts that Merlin couldn’t really hope to understand.  Thoughts he probably didn’t really want to understand.  “That’s a weird name,” he added eventually.

Merlin chuckled, pulling over one the visitor chairs—the ones he knew to be quite frankly the most uncomfortable things to ever be sat in—over to Gwaine's bed to sit in.

“What’s funny?” Gwaine asked, eyes tracking him a little more intently than Merlin expected.

“Oh, it’s nothing.  You just said the same thing last night.”

“Did I now?”  Gwaine said, cracking a weak smile in Merlin’s direction.  “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Yep.  And then you tried to hit on me.”

“That sounds a little bit closer.”

“…in front of my boyfriend.”

“Okay, now that sounds like me.”  Something dawned on Gwaine then.  “So it was the boyfriend that put me in here?”

“Oh no.  The boyfriend is just footing the bill.  Not really the violent, territorial type,” he said.

Gwaine groaned and blew away a bit of hair that dropped across his face.  “I can pay my own bills, thanks.”

“It’s more to show appreciation.  Since you saved his life and everything.”

“That _really_ doesn’t sound like me.”

Merlin leaned back in his chair, taking in the man in front of him.  He found it interesting to see the difference between the Gwaine of the night before—rowdy and ready to buy them all drinks—and the Gwaine that laid in front of him—significantly less drunk and quite a bit grumpier.  He could only smile as Gwaine plucked uselessly at his hospital gown like it was an offense to him.  He moved to brush the hair from his face as it slipped back down, but hit his forehead with the pulse oximeter in the process.  He gave Merlin a less than menacing glare, like he might be the one responsible for all of this.

“Hey, I’m not the one who made you take a knife for Arthur.”

“I suppose not.  I need to become more in concert with drunk me, get him to make better decisions.”

Merlin opened his mouth to agree but Gwaine cut him off gently.  “What's the deal then?  Am I getting out of here today?”

“Uh, I’m not really…” But instead of completing the thought, he reached over and pressed the call button on the bed rail.  “They should be able to tell you, I just got in here right before you woke up.  Also, the whole doctor-patient confidentiality thing.”

He didn’t tell him that didn’t quite apply in conversations between hospital staff, but he also didn’t quite feel like explaining why they all still treated him like he was still a part of said hospital staff.  But Gwaine gave him a look, one that Merlin would later come to learn meant that Gwaine didn’t really believe him but wasn’t going to say anything.

All Merlin could really do was send him a small, apologetic smile.  Something softened in Gwaine’s expression and Merlin really didn’t want to think about the way it made something in his chest flutter.  Instead he plucked up the shopping bag, almost forgotten by the base of the IV stand.

“I really just came to bring you some jeans, since they had to cut them off and all.”  He made a snipping motion with his hand, made sure not to add that bringing clothes was something family or a friend usually did.  But Gwaine, perhaps unsurprisingly to both Merlin and Arthur, didn’t have any ICE contacts to get in touch with, so that morning they called the number that they jotted down on Gwaine’s intake forms.  Arthur's mobile.  “They were soaked in blood anyways,” he added.

Gwaine picked up the bag as Merlin passed it over to him, peeking inside to get a preview.  “Thanks, mate.”

A silence drifted down over them as Merlin did his best to think of a subtle way to slip out of the room before a nurse arrived and wrangled him into an endless conversation about what he was up to those days.  Finally he chose to just be blunt.

“I should get going.  Errands, deadlines, et cetera,” he said.  Standing up, he scooted the chair back against the wall.  “I’ll check in on you in the morning?”

Gwaine rolled his eyes.  “I thought we were pretending that you didn’t know when I was getting out of here.”

Merlin pointed at him, trying to think of something to save face.  “Right, well, if I never see you again, then…”

“Right.” Gwaine gave him a mock salute, accidentally hitting himself with the pulse oximeter once more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to expand on the asexual relationship tag and go ahead and say it is for Merlin/Arthur. Their relationship is still an intimate and romantic one, just non-sexual.

Merlin jolted awake.  Waking in that way had never been something he enjoyed, far from it actually.  But he knew very well that there were even less pleasant ways to wake.  After Will died, too many nights found his sleep interrupted by him waking up nearly half way across the room.  Drenched in sweat, he’d scramble for the light switch, certain Will stood in the room with him, hovering near the bed and watching him with bright, empty eyes. 

Arthur—able to sleep through just about anything except light brighter than a black hole—would wake with the click of the overhead lamp.  It was an ugly light that they never really used, too bright and white and blinding.  But it filled all of the room’s dark spaces and only then, knowing they were indeed alone, would Arthur be able to drowsily tug him back to bed, reassuring him that whatever he thought he saw in the darkness was just a dream.

But when he woke then, it wasn’t with that feeling of an extra person being in the room.  Rather it was just a sudden and unpleasantly persistent wakefulness.  The kind where one second you could be deeply entrenched in slumber, enjoying the fuzzy scenes of a dream ready to be forgotten, and the next second you are wide awake, as though you had been for hours.

He searched with a begrudging hand for the source of his abrupt and unwelcomed return to the world of the awake as it vibrated with nagging insistence a foot away.  Unlike Arthur, it took barely a whisper of noise to get him up and he never ceased to be surprised that Arthur could carry on asleep as his own phone buzzed and buzzed where it always ended up—jammed underneath the pillow right alongside his head.

“Time to wake up,” he said, his voice cracked and dry with sleep.  It all became a sort of ritual for him.  Every morning he’d shut off his alarm, tell Arthur to wake up, nudge him with his elbow, then shove at his deadweight when that didn’t work, all the while Arthur continued to do the exact and complete opposite.  Every morning it was the same and since he knew all too well that the inevitable would come—that in order to get Arthur out of bed, he would himself have to get up and yank open their blackout curtains and let in all of the light that the morning had to offer—he wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t just skip the first steps.

Perhaps because he himself felt a little lazy that morning, it took him a little longer to get through the ritual.  He prodded at Arthur’s shoulder, only to follow it up by curling into the warm blankets for another five minutes.  Then he jostled at his hip, only it was so halfhearted and weak he wasn’t even sure if Arthur felt it.  Eventually though he urged his tired bones into movement and hovered over Arthur’s bare back in thought.  He could’ve pinched him, it might work to get him up.  Or perhaps play some song on his phone with the volume jack up as high as it would go, right next to his ear.  But he wasn’t feeling particularly cruel and instead kissed a knob in his spine.  Thoracic, his mind supplied almost uselessly, the T4 vertebra that sat nestled between his shoulder blades.  But that did little more than earn an appreciative and sleepy mumble from deep beneath the pillow.

So he gave up.  Acknowledging that Arthur would outlast him he bounded from the bed, making sure to jostle the mattress as much as possible before heading for the curtains.  He only had them open part of the way before Arthur groaned and cursed and pelted his pillow at him.  Merlin, long since tuned in with Arthur’s own morning ritual of attempting to get Merlin to let him sleep in, knew to dodge it.  He picked it up though, and tossed it back on the bed with a snicker.

 

Merlin kept an ear out for the shower to finally shut off down the hall.  He made it well through half a bowl of cereal before he heard the sounds of Arthur emerging from the bathroom and shuffling noisily for a couple minutes from room to room.  Their apartment wasn’t too big considering what they could actually afford, so it didn’t take long before he was rounding the corner considerably more awake and dressed than when Merlin left him in the bedroom where he begged and moaned for more sleep.

“You going to the hospital again today?” He asked, tightening his tie and tucking in at the island next to him.  Merlin knew he preferred a more substantial breakfast in the morning, with at least some kind of meat to sink his teeth into, but Merlin also knew he never intended to make them himself.  Thus Arthur often resorted to filling himself up with cereal whenever Merlin woke up unwilling to put in an extra effort.

Merlin dwelled on his question for a minute though, not entirely sure why he hesitated to tell the truth.  He scraped the dry cereal from the edge of his bowl, submerging it in the milk before fessing up. 

“Yeah, Gwaine should be getting discharged, thought I’d make sure he got home fine and all,” he said, sparing a glance at Arthur from the corner of his eye.

Arthur nodded, shaking out some cereal into the bowl Merlin set out for him when he got his own from the cabinet.  “Are you sure you want to do that?” He asked.

If Merlin had any doubts about how aware Arthur was that he spent the last few months quite purposefully avoiding the hospital, they flew right out the window.  Even so, he wasn’t entirely sure if Arthur actually knew why.

“It’s fine,” he said, trying his best to make it sound like he was much more fine than he really felt.  He couldn’t exactly explain the kind of dreading anticipation that filled him at the thought of walking through those doors, how he couldn’t even enter the intensive care unit any more, couldn’t face Gaius’s disappointment, couldn’t face his own disappointment in himself.  Luckily Arthur either bought it, or didn’t feel like prying at that moment and Merlin was glad for either.

“I would go with you but…” Arthur made an aborted motion with his hand, letting the entirety of his responsibilities that went along with his work go unsaid, and really, Merlin understood.

They finished the rest of their short breakfast in an easy quiet as Arthur scrolled idly through his emails and Merlin amended his calendar to rearrange his schedule for the day.  By the time 7:00 rolled up on them, Merlin had already gathered their dishes and deposited them in the sink.  He stayed in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as Arthur put on his really too expensive shoes by the door.

“I’ll see you later?” Arthur asked, only because Merlin had spent a few evening the last couple weeks at the library, buried behind books and notebooks and his laptop, scrawling out notes, typing furiously, only returning home long after Arthur.  As he’d come in through the door, he made sure to do it quietly, knowing Arthur would already be asleep, tired from a long day and snoring away indelicately in their bed.

“Yeah, no library or anything,” he said.

They exchanged goodbyes and Arthur made him promise to give him an update on Gwaine as he headed for the door.  Merlin turned to start washing the dishes once he thought Arthur was gone.  However, he felt himself get tugged back before he realized that he wasn’t.  An arm wrapped loosely around his neck and wincing through the impromptu headlock, he couldn’t appreciate the kiss that got pressed to his temple until after Arthur was gone and out the door, leaving Merlin to try his best to hide a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should be getting back to the merwaine in the next chapter.


End file.
